 "Photo: Austin Carpenter | Valley Star")
When examined closely, Apple's ban of over 5,000 "overtly sexual applications from its app store" appear to be about keeping profits high, not keeping their app store clean, despite what Apple executives say.
"It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see," said Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller.
But Schiller's words aren't lining up with Apple's actions; Apple has pulled over 5,000 "objectionable" apps from its store, from animated strip poker games to apps doing nothing more than selling swimwear and lingerie. However, apps from large adult entertainment companies such as Playboy and FHM have remained in the app store, as well as the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition app. If Apple were really trying to protect its users, it would have banned these adult apps as well.
"The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format," Schiller said.
One can argue that Sports Illustrated is first and foremost a sporting magazine, but there is no reasonable way that Apple can say that about Playboy, an empire built on the "overtly sexual content" that Apple is supposedly trying to ban.
Nobody is saying we shouldn't protect the children, but anyone who has an Apple device can access overtly sexual material through the Safari browser which is standard on much of Apple's hardware. Pornography, a $10 billion industry in the United States alone isn't going away anytime soon. What apple should do is create a protected adult section in their app store, and continue to allow adults to enjoy their explicit content, just not in front of the kids.
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